Booze and Poetry
by gwybodaeth
Summary: A behind-the-scenes look at the lives of two of the show's more savvy minor characters and how their lives might have collided. Professional politics can be lonely, and sometimes all that gets you through the day are booze, poetry, and the comforting words of a fellow warrior. Amy/Joey femslash. Don't like, don't read.


Amy Gardner had a secret.

Well, it was more accurate to say she had many secrets. You couldn't work in the business she was in without collecting a trove of dirty information, most of it about others, select bits about yourself. But one of her secrets was more secret than her other secrets—she was a closet romantic.

And, if that last observation was anything to go by, she might just have another secret. She was, maybe, possibly, the slightest, littlest, teensy-weensiest bit tipsy. Just maybe, though.

But even if she was, she had plenty of justification. Justification that she estimated would stand five-foot-six in her stockinged feet and always caused Amy's heart to skip a beat when she laid eyes on her.

All right, definitely tipsy. She had laid eyes on Joey Lucas once, once, just two hours ago, and her heart had most certainly not done anything at all out of the ordinary. Her legendary denial and two bottles of a delightfully sweet white champagne lifted from a White House reception said so. And would champagne that had graced the White House lie? She nodded to empty air, having concluded the one-sided argument to her satisfaction.

As for the damning charge of romanticism, however, she would have to plead guilty. She read romance novels, squeed (internally) at the happier romantic happenings that made the rounds of the DC gossip circuit, and even read poetry. Poetry, for God's sake. Amy Gardner—all business, take-no-prisoners, hard-ass Amy Gardner—read poetry.

She of course took the proper steps to hide this, having gone to the lengths of having a collection of her favorites custom-printed to look like most mass-produced hardcovers. This she covered with the dust jacket of whatever the hot political biography, pot-boiler, or feminist tract of the day happened to be. Thankfully, these measures had proven successful. Not even Josh Lyman had ferreted out this most dire of secrets, despite having lived together for several months.

The only real problem was that appropriate verses tended to pop into her head at the most inopportune of times, and she had a hard time biting them back. And tonight, disaster finally struck. Or didn't strike. Or may have struck, she supposed. It was hard to be sure when since she hadn't stuck around long enough to find out. All Amy knew was that the world had turned upside down when she first laid eyes on her.

* * *

And moving through a mirror clear  
That hangs before her all the year,  
Shadows of the world appear.

It was quite incomprehensible to Amy how she had gone so long without meeting Joey Lucas. Washington was an almost incestuously small town, and it got even smaller when you considered she and Joey played (more or less and most of the time) for the same team. Yet their only dealings had been through e-mail, although those had been extensive.

She and Joey were both liberal, feminist, free-lance political operatives—two of the best in the business, even if she did say so herself. She did. Often. And with a Democratic White House that seemed incapable of keeping its nose clean for more than a couple of weeks, it was inevitable that they would both end up working for the Bartlet administration.

She was glad to have all the help she could get. Babysitting the people who ran the country was a stressful and demanding job, one that was made no easier by somebody's bright idea of giving Josh Lyman a serious amount of power. That was just asking for trouble. So was sleeping with him, but that was a conversation she wouldn't bore her liquid companion with. She had had it enough times to have come to terms with it, and even to admit, to a very small and secret part of herself, that the catastrophic nature of their romance might have been more her fault than his.

My, she was keeping a lot of secrets. Amy poured herself another glass of champagne to give herself time to regroup. Where had she been in her stumble down memory lane?

Oh, yes. The peculiar nature of her relationship with Joey Lucas.

They had moved in different circles and worked for the White House in different capacities. Joey was a pollster, a master at finding out what people thought without them knowing they had even been asked. Amy was an unofficial advisor, a frenemy, a crusader for the far-left causes the centrist administration couldn't champion directly.

The re-election campaign had brought them together, as it had brought everyone together. The Democratic Party was in trouble, and it was all hands on deck. The campaign was hectic, even more so than the first one, the fabled ascension of the idealistic no-hoper of which she and everyone else had heard so much. With the president and staff dividing their time between DC and tight-packed trips to all fifty states, she and Joey had never managed to be in the same place at the same time. Instead, they had collaborated through e-mail on their common cause of women's issues. Amy had suggested policy, Joey had provided framing.

They had a lot in common, politically. They worked hard together, unseen in the background, to influence both the White House and the nation. Inevitably, they had grown closer, started sharing more with each other, and it was then that the professional and the personal began to blur.

* * *

There she weaves by night and day  
A magic web with colours gay.  
She has heard a whisper say,  
A curse is on her if she stay…

Campaigns are lonely, stressful things. You spend twenty-hour days surrounded by people but strangely alone, since everyone is too focused to indulge in any meaningful human interaction. Some people can't take the stress, other start not-so-secret affairs (often with the last person you would expect), and some formed friendships. If you were lucky, the bonding experience of a campaign could lead to a relationship that would last well beyond your time in the proverbial trenches.

Amy and Joey had formed that kind of friendship. Business e-mails started to include personal messages, tidbits about their respective days, triumphs, setbacks, flights of fancy and deepest desires. The loneliness had gone away, replaced by a warm glow and a small smile every night when Amy turned on her computer one last time before catching whatever sleep she could.

Joey's messages always made her smile. She would share the most amazing parts of campaigning with her—not the self-absorbed obsession with personal successes that many politicos unfortunately possessed, but little things that made the job truly rewarding. Watching a lowly intern grow into his or her own, finding themselves and taking on responsibility. Workers caring for one another when the going got tough(er). Descriptions of those moments of true humanity on the part of the great man they both backed, not the made-for-TV stuff, but the real deal.

Amy had shared more of herself with Joey than with anyone else she had ever met. Hopes, dreams, insecurities. Her ambition to one day actually run for office, to make decisions from the inside in a way Josh Lyman and so many others obviously thought she couldn't. Her fears that she wasn't doing enough to fight for women's rights, and with how slow any change came, her occasional doubts that she was doing anything at all. She talked about her family, something Amy hadn't told anyone about in two decades—how they had turned their back on her for her political beliefs, and for her confused sexuality, something she had buried with the rest of her many secrets ever since.

* * *

She knows not what the curse may be,  
And so she weaveth steadily,  
And little other care hath she,  
The Lady of Shalott.

Joey had responded, sympathized, and encouraged in equal measure. Amy felt driven to share more, to go deeper, to place her trust in the hands of a woman she had never even laid eyes on. Two years passed this way, a midterm election had come and was thankfully gone. They had failed to take back the house and they had failed to meet. Amy wondered in her buzzed state, now turning maudlin, which she minded more.

Not having met her, it was definitely not having met Joey Lucas which she regretted most.

She cared more about that than the battle she had been waging for twenty years, and that was the dark side to her indulgence. She had let Joey in too far. Funny, smart, endearing, compassionate Joey had pierced her armor so effortlessly, Amy wasn't even aware of it until it was too late. Until she was in love with a woman who, over three years of (saved and re-read) e-mails, had never once given any indication that she might harbor such feelings in return.

She had seen it coming—how could she not? And still she had been powerless to prevent it, her feelings growing stronger with every night that passed as she continued her bedtime correspondence with her unwitting friend.

Addressing a nearby rose bush, she quoted: "But in her web she still delights, to weave the mirror's magic sights…"

And it had been enough, she firmly believed that. It had to be. But…

"I am half sick of shadows said the Lady of Shalott."

Neither of those observations had been nearly slurred enough, she recognized. Peering dubiously at the bottle still in her hand, Amy took a judicious swig. Upon proper consideration and enjoyment of both the bouquet and the taste, she cheerfully toasted a bed of small tea roses, barely visible in the ambient light seeping out into the White House Rose Garden and tipped the remainder down in several less-than-reverential gulps.

Putting her first casualty of the evening to one side, Amy began working at the foil on the next bottle. The night had been a disaster, the 'curse' had finally fallen upon her, and the pre-gaming she and some of her friends had done at a local bar had been responsible. Alcohol had gotten her lightweight self into trouble, and it had better get her out again if it knew what was good for it. She might only have access to champagne, but she was damned if she was going to end this night sober.

* * *

Out flew the web and floated wide;  
The mirror cracked from side to side;  
"The curse is come upon me," cried  
The Lady of Shalott.

It was that time of year again, that time so beloved of so many people, a time for fun, family, and holiday cheer—or, if you were Amy Gardner, a time for attending boring parties in an effort to bilk money from even more boring people. Yes, Christmas had come to Washington, and she was miserable. Tonight was the pinnacle of the Yuletide debacle, the White House Congressional Christmas party, an event that produced so much hot air Amy was amazed it wasn't picketed by environmentalists.

So of course, when some of her friends had called and asked if she wanted to meet for drinks beforehand, she had jumped on the invitation faster Toby Ziegler could frown. Big mistake.

She had arrived at the party in a good mood for a change, which was to say a glass or two of champagne away from not being able to walk straight. When had she become such a lightweight? Honestly, Josh could've beaten her in a drinking competition, and that was just sad. She had made the rounds, gotten more than the usual in donations—maybe not actually snarling was a technique she would use in the future—and had been just about to find a seat to listen to Yo Yo Ma's second White House performance when it happened.

CJ, who also looked a bit the worse for wear, had caught her elbow. Amy had absently steadied her while continuing to case the remaining seats. Not paying attention to the Press Secretary's babbling (Danny something, something…love that cannot be…desire to hit and kiss him, or kiss and hit him), she was startled when CJ came to a halt mid-word to exclaim.

"Hey! It's Joey Lucas! I had no idea she was in town. You two have met, right?"

CJ was loud, very loud, and while that might not have mattered to Joey, it certainly got her aide's attention. He touched her on the shoulder and signed briefly. In that instant, the smiling face of the woman of Amy's dreams turned toward her, and she saw her for the first time.

Then the world shattered.

All her blood rushed to her tipsy head as she was overwhelmed. In her experience, moments like this didn't happen outside of the cheesy romances that were one of her more guilty pleasures, but the combination of booze, stress, and infatuation coalesced into the absolute abandonment of self-control. She spoke, her own voice far away.

"Out flew the web and floated wide; the mirror crack'd from side to side; 'My doom is come upon me!' cried the Lady of Shalott."

She came back to herself with an almighty jerk, thankful beyond words that Joey's signer was standing too far away to have caught what was little more than a murmur. But Joey's face was changing anyway, looking quizzically in her direction.

It was then that Amy remembered that Joey Lucas could read lips.

* * *

And that, failing dismally in making a long story short, was how Amy Gardner had found herself fleeing from the East Room, slowing only to scoop up two bottles of very fine champagne. She had brushed past secret service who had luckily recognized her, and practically ran across the South Portico to the solitude of the Rose Garden. Those two bottles had nearly run dry by now, and they had proved, while valiant and true, not nearly up to the task of dulling Amy's acute embarrassment. Her flight had offered a similarly temporary reprieve, since she had no idea how she was going to get outside the White House gates without going back the way she had come.

Well, she certainly wasn't going back there, not in the foreseeable future. She supposed she would just wait until the secret service came by to—very politely—through her out.

A voice interrupted her thoughts.

"So this is where you've been hiding."

Amy had never heard the voice before, but there was no mistaking it. Unless a second deaf person who had reason to be concerned for her welfare had shown up at the party, Joey Lucas had just found her.

Slowly, she turned, being careful to present her face squarely since Joey's aide was absent. It seemed impossibly hard, as all she wanted was to duck her head and let her shoulder-length hair shield her face, but that would be unfair. Amy spoke clearly.

"I don't know what you must think of me…"

"I don't know what I think of you, except that you have much more than just a lovely face."

"You saw, then. I'm sorry, booze and stress are not a good combination. I just flipped for a minute."

Joey cocked her head, very much in the manner of someone listening to a sound only they can hear. She smiled lightly, eyes crinkling endearingly at the corners into small lines made through years of laughter.

"I think there is more, since people don't usually assume they're cursed for no reason."

Joey's voice was teasing, but Amy couldn't hold back anymore.

"It's just that you're so beautiful! Not only is everything else about you amazing, but you're beautiful too? How can I…when I've…"

She ran out of words, unable to vocalize the pain she had seen many of her lesbian friends experience. Romance is hard for lesbians, for whom it is all too common to find that perfect someone, only to have tentative hopes dashed before a romance can even truly begin. Amy was on the receiving end of those cruel, pitiless odds now, and God did it sting.

"You think I'm beautiful?" Joey asked, apparently surprised.

"Of course you're beautiful! Everything about you is beautiful! Your face, your laughing eyes, your determination, your intelligence, the e-mails you write to me, everything! I've thought so for so long. And now that we've finally met, I've gone and made a fool out of myself, and ruined the most perfect friendship I ever had, and—"

Amy was silenced by the blonde's finger against her lips.

"Do you know what I think?"

"No," a pained whisper.

"I think I would very much like to kiss you."

Ever so slowly, Joey moved forward as she stood still, unable to process the sudden turn the evening had taken. Fleetingly, their lips met, shy and uncertain. Breath mingled and hearts raced. They met again, and a third time, growing bolder until all pretense lay abandoned, replaced by a hunger years in the making.

Forget whatever the White House was peddling—this was champagne. It fizzed and bubbled from Amy's lips and down her throat, spreading through her and warming her deep inside. She felt light, like the foam, like Joey's kiss gave her the power to fly amidst the stars if she chose.

Needy mouths moved more urgently, tongues battled, and hands wandered. Amy had waited so long, and she could not get enough of this woman she had never met but knew so well. She knew, deep down, that there would never be enough, and she could only hope Joey felt the same.

Drunk on their newfound passion, they stumbled over an empty bottle and fell together into a bed of pink blossoms. They broke apart, laughing, and just looked at each other, cherishing what they had just found.

Eventually, Joey stood and offered her hand.

"Shall we go back? Yo Yo Ma might still be playing."

"What, still? It's been at least two and a half hours!"

"Yes, well, CJ slurred something about the President and his diabolical plan to punish Congress for its lack of action during the year while enjoying himself at the same time. If I had to guess, I'd say there's still a good hour left."

Shaking her head at the unexpected cruel streak that lay beneath Josiah Bartlet's avuncular façade, Amy allowed herself to be pulled up. They walked back up the Portico, swinging their hands between them, sneaking glances and hiding blushes. As the approached to East Room, Amy reflected sadly that she had yet another secret to keep, as she made to disentangle their entwined hands.

The taller woman held on tighter, and Amy looked up in surprise to see a reassuring smile. Giving silent agreement, she left her hand where it was.

Perhaps she didn't need to keep quite so many secrets after all.

* * *

A/N: Please review!


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